I have started doing the research for a project I will be doing on reasons that parents give for not vaccinating their children. It is a very good example of medical technology that has to be translated. Who cares how great the technology is, if everyone is afraid to use it?
First I will disclaim that my training teaches me that vaccines are one of the most important public health innovations in modern history… up there with water and sanitation. I am both saddened are angered by vaccine access issues in the developing world, where lack of access to vaccines results in vaccine PREVENTABLE infections that cause sickness and death. I am an avid proponent of vaccines.Other disclaimer: I’m not a doctor I am a fourth year medical student who has read some stuff and seen some people.
That said vaccines are a medical therapy. I would feel like I was committing malpractice if I did not recommend them. They are equivalent to antibiotics, or blood pressure medicine, or clot breaking medicine for someone who has stroke due to a blood clot. The difference is they are prophylactic. Like antibiotics, or blood pressure meds, or clot busters there are benefits and risks to the therapy. Most people do great with antibiotics (minus some diarrhea), but sometimes people have really bad very serious allergic reactions. Are we going to stop using life saving antibiotics because this is a possibility? I would say that if we did that would be criminal, and given the choice most people do their own risk benefit analysis and choose the therapy. In a country where people often choose very dangerous chemotherapy drugs, given very low probabilities of success I am a bit surprised by the reactions of some to the anecdotes about vaccines.
One thing that upsets me about the vaccine conversation is when people refuse them for uninformed reasons. If you weigh the true risks, and true benefits and decide against it, that’s fine with me. The problem is when anecdotes fuel a person’s decision. I understand the fear that a news story, or a friends experience can place in the minds of parents and individuals. But the millions of people who get the flu shot and are fine the next day (minus an achy arm), will never make the news. When making your decision remember that serious side effects are very rare. Some of the factors that lead to serious side effects include, the person’s previous health status, the person’s genetics, and the person’s unknown allergy. No one can tell you for sure that you will not be one of those 1 in a million that have a bad reaction, but the odds are you won’t. The other thing is, not every reaction is due to the vaccine. If a person gets the flu after the vaccine maybe they are one of the people who the vaccine does not cause a sufficient immune response. Vaccines are tested in such a way that they have to result in a protective response in most but not all people that it is tested on. That said some people do not have the right combo of immune genetics to respond to the vaccine. With regard to the flu, the vaccine does not include all of the strains of flu just the mostly likely and/or dangerous. The other thing is sometimes, things were going to happen anyway, and the timing of the vaccine was an unfortunate interlude. Association does not automatically mean causation. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. I think we should be even in our interpretation of these sorts of things.
With regard to H1N1 it is important to know that if you are fine with getting a regular flu shot you should be fine with getting the H1N1 shot. They are made in the exact same way. (see CDC website)
I would like to say that I don’t think health professionals do the greatest job of allaying the fears of those who come to them with anecdotes or other fears about vaccines. Much like other realms of medicine, they often make the decision for the patient saying “you much get this… it is safe don’t worry… see you later…” You are injecting medicine in a healthy patient to prevent a disease. If after given accurate information about the dangers of the disease, and most importantly after understand the real risks vs. benefits, the patient should be able to decide. I think that if we have an outbreak of H1N1 and people are very sick and/or dying around them, then people will run each other over to get the vaccine. We in the US have the luxury of not having witnessed an epidemic from any of the vaccine preventable diseases.
So weigh the pros and cons for yourself. If you are ambivalent about the flu vaccine consider: If you are a health care worker, you will be exposed to flu, if you get the flu, you will expose it to sick people who are more likely to die from it. If you are a hermit that never leaves the house without a gas mask on, your odd or different from our health care worker example. If your kids in day care, her or she will probably be exposed. If your kid never leaves the house, if you can keep sick family members away your kids’ odds of not getting the flu are lower than say the day care kid. If you’re a healthy adult that lives a normal life, you may get the flu. Weigh whether you want to deal with it or not, but odds are you won’t die. If you go home to a older person or child, the odds are you will pass it to them and they could have a long critical sickness or die. There are hundreds of scenarios.
Lastly, if you believe in a government conspiracy to kill the masses by injecting people with deadly diseases through vaccines I have nothing for you. Apologies, but I don’t really have any evidence to support that, especially in light of the large number of people living fine after vaccines. I do know that people die and or suffer serious sickness from some of these vaccine preventable diseases.
